Blood-Crow
by cswang
Summary: A Horus Heresy story. The dream of the Great Crusade dies upon the black sands of Isstvan: seven Legions race to confront the traitor Warmaster Horus. Kaedes Nex, Moritat-Prime of the Raven Guard has always stood apart from his Legion, shunned and avoided as a madman and a murderer. When the galaxy descends into insanity, the madman shall find his way. Rated M for violence.
1. Judgment

**Author's Note:**

All Horus Heresy and Warhammer 40000 rights and such belong to Games Workshop. Mad kudos to Forge World for their amazing Horus Heresy series of hobby books. Kaedes Nex appears in the _Extermination_ volume of their Isstvan trilogy.

* * *

**Planetfall, Minus Seven Hours Terran Sidereal**

"Blood-Crow."

They always called him that. Kaedes Nex acknowledged the remark with a fractional tilt of his head, walking past the Reconnaissance Squad. One of the Legionaries gave him an old-fashioned salute, clenched fist to breastplate. Nex ignored it, kept walking. He moved past an Assault Squad; they didn't acknowledge him besides one Legionary who made an old warding gesture from Deliverance towards him.

Nex stalked the corridors of the _Shadow of the Emperor_, flagship of the Raven Guard Legion. The sparse, dark corridors echoed with purposeful activity. Legionnaires clustered together in their squads, checked power armor and weapons ranging from bolters and combat blades to missile launchers and Volkite relic-guns. The XIXth Legion, already known for its taciturn nature, stayed mostly silent as they prepared for war.

Kaedes Nex knew why; the unthinkable had occurred. Horus, Warmaster of the Imperium's armies, had turned traitor. The Raven Guard was among the collected might of seven Astartes Legions powering towards the Isstvan system to bring judgment to the wayward Warmaster and his traitor Legions – just hours away now. The news had caused such distress among the few remembrancers attached to the Raven Guard fleet. Among many of the Astartes, too.

Nex knew why; he just didn't understand or care.

All it meant was he had more targets. Difficult ones, certainly; the prospect of hunting and killing other Astartes was... intriguing. He wondered which of the enemy Legions would pose the most challenge. The Sons of Horus, pride of the Warmaster? The Emperor's Children, with their flashy showmanship? Perhaps Mortarion's Legion or Angron's berserker sons?

Most of the others ignored or avoided him as the prowled through the corridors. He cared not. He knew how the others saw him; that was fine – it meant they usually stayed out of his way. Eventually he came to the segregated decks set aside for the Legion Moritat cadres and the Destroyer squads.

Dozens of Marines made their own war preparations. Bolt pistols were loaded, racked, and strapped into heavy holsters. Destroyers hefted missile launchers fitted with rotary drum magazines and humming suspensor webs. Moritats strapped rad grenades to harnesses alongside customized pistols and extra magazines.

"Huntsman." That was Thayon Melchar, Moritat-Secundus. He nodded to Nex as he snugged his modified plasma pistols into their cross-draw holsters. "You're late."

Nex returned the nod after a second. "There were meetings."

"Of course there were." Melchar looked like he wanted to say more for a second but tipped his head instead.

Nex walked silently towards the locker vault where his weapons waited. Annoyingly, Melchar followed him. Kaedes ignored him as he pressed his hand against the gene-reader surface and let the device verify his identity. He reached in once the doors ground open and picked up the first of his Fulcrum pistols.

The Fulcrum deployed and extended in his hands, going from its collapsed storage state to live and active. Ornate etchings ran along the barrel coil shroud, relics of the Kiavahr Tech Guilds. He remembered plucking this one from the hands of a Guild Overseer – after carving open the length of his spine with a jagged piece of sharpened metal. He checked the Fulcrum's action and ejected the magazine before slamming it back in. A repeat of the procedure verified the condition of his other Fulcrum and Nex slipped them into his holsters.

Magazines went into pouches on his hips, torso webbing, back webbing, and thigh slings. The dense metal slugs the Fulcrums fired lacked the propellant cases of bolter rounds, but given the sheer size of the slugs themselves he needed spare magazines.

Lots of them.

Nex brought out his long cameleoline cloak, slung it over one pauldrons. Only then did he turn to Melchar. "What?"

"You should say something to the cadre."

"Why?"

Melchar sighed. "We're about to bring war against other Legions – other Astartes."

"So?"

"By any measure, this is a… momentous occasion. A calamity, if you will. You are the Prime. You should say something."

Was this another one of those integration exercises the Primarch always nudged him towards? "Fine."

Melchar's brow arched in surprise as Nex moved hesitantly towards a central point in the arming chamber. Kaedes halted outside the glare of one illumination panel; he'd always avoided such locations. They were open, vulnerable. Conversations halted as Destroyers and Moritats noticed the Blood-Crow waiting, as if to address them.

Nex stood silently for a minute, struggling with the unfamiliar task of oration. What had the Primarch said about situations like this? _Just be your inspirational self, Kaedes._

He was fairly sure Corax had been jesting.

He raised his voice; it felt strange to be speaking this loud. "You all know what the Warmaster has done."

Silence. The others stared at him. Was that normal?

"The targets have changed. The mission has not. Locate. Mark. Execute."

They still stared at him. What else did they want? Oh.

"For the Raven. Victory or death."

"Victory or death!" Satisfied, the others saluted and returned to their preparations.

Nex slunk back from the light's edge. Melchar joined him – _again_ – scarred face splitting into a grin. "Truly a speech to put the remembrancers to shame."

The Moritat-Prime headed for the ordnance halls, not looking at Melchar. "What did you expect?"

"Pretty much that, actually," Melchar admitted. "Have you been practicing your oratory skills?"

"No."

"Are you sure? You were multisyllabic at points there."

Nex turned his head to Melchar; his eyes solid fields of black.

Melchar shrugged. His own eyes, though also the distinctive solid black of the Nineteenth, glittered faintly with mirth. "Alright, alright. No need to go Sable Brand on me."

Nex said nothing as he signed into the ordnance hall. The space inside was brightly lit, uncomfortably so to his sensibilities. He didn't begrudge, it though. Only a fool handled such weapons as were stored here in the dark.

"Blood-Crow." The Destroyer sergeant on armorial duty nodded once at him stiffly, then looked past over his shoulder. "Secundus Melchar."

"Othan." Melchar returned the nod and clasped wrists with the veteran Destroyer.

Nex ignored them and headed deeper into the hall. He passed rows of mundane explosives, absentmindedly grabbing frags and kraks to clip to his belt. The exotic ordnance lay deeper in, many in sealed mini-vaults. Rad grenades, hallucinogen canisters, bio-crafted viral mixers: all manner of proscribed arms lay within these domains.

He took his customary set of shroud bombs from their rack, slipping the little disc-shaped charges into their pouch at his waist. He turned back towards the entrance – and remembered there was something else he'd meant to get.

Nex unlocked a sealed, isolated vault, then walked back towards the two at the entrance, extra payload in hand. Both their black eyes widened as they saw the cylindrical grenade he carried. Othan moved to block the door. "Blood-Crow, you know the Raven Lord's stance on you carrying those weapons."

"The Primarch authorized it."

Othan and Melchar exchanged glances. Nex was many things, all of them unpleasant, but he'd never been a liar. "Emperor's balls," Melchar said. "Corax let _you_ have phosphex? He must be furious at Horus."

Othan sighed. "This is not a good-Don't do that!" he hissed as Nex tested the weight of the phosphex bomb by tossing it up and catching it.

Nex held the canister of ravenous chemicals lightly in his fingertips, looking over the top of it at Othan. "Why?"

"_Why?!_ Do you even know what that- Never mind. Just take it and get out."

Nex did.

Melchar still followed him; the two moved like shadows through the corridors of the battle-barge. He didn't know why, and Melchar wasn't saying anything. Finally he looked over at the other Moritat again.

"What?"

Melchar stopped, but then hurried to keep up as Nex kept walking. "Did you ever expect to survive this long, Kaedes?"

What a curious question. "No."

"I figured you'd say that."

"Then why ask?"

Melchar's face did something Nex didn't quite recognize – was that… annoyance? Consternation? "This is unlike anything we've faced before, Huntsman. Not all of us will live through the battle."

"It's always like that."

Melchar put a hand on Nex's pauldrons. The Blood-Crow finally stopped, looked down at the hand in confusion. "I just have a feeling I won't be among those breathing after the blood dries. If I fall, Kaedes…" The hand left his shoulder, extended out for a warrior's handshake. "It has been an honor."

Nex stared. This was… unusual. Was he supposed to say something here? He blinked, and decided on, "If you fall, you fall. What else is there?"

"A good death, of course. To fall with purpose, make it count."

_Purpose._ There was that word again. Nex resumed walking. The Primarch liked that word, used it to justify the deeds the Raven Guard performed both on the field of battle and in the dark of night.

Purpose was what the Legion clung to, lived and died for.

Nex didn't get it at all.

* * *

**Planetfall, Minus Nineteen Minutes Terran Sidereal**

"All squads to transports! Board up!"

The embarkation deck was a hive of frenetic activity. Legionnaires marched into Stormbirds and Thunderhawks, climbed into drop pods of various models. Armored vehicles rolled into position for transports to clamp onto them. The Primarch stood near the center, surrounded by his chosen commanders and Shadow Captains.

Corvus Corax stood arrayed for war, resplendent in his sable plate. He towered over his gene-sons, looking down as he discussed final strategic minutiae. Energized claws sheathed his hands, inactive as he gestured. The dark metal wings of his jump pack spread out behind him. Nex admired the razor wings; they left the most fascinating trails of blood arching through the air when Corax lunged past a target with them.

Corax seemed to sense Nex's scrutiny. He looked up from the assembled commanders across the way towards where the Moritat lurked in the darkness beneath a Shadowhawk's wing. Corax gave the barest nod; the Primarch had always been able to pinpoint him in an instance, even in his cameleoline-modified armor.

Nex returned the acknowledgement. The Primarch was one of the few he felt respect – or anything – for. He watched and listened as Space Marines moved through the dance of deployment. Tactical and Support squads boarded transports first, followed by Assault squads. Veteran squads carried personalized gear into transports emblazoned with honors and kill markings. Terminator squads thudded across the deck, their heavy footfalls audible even over the roar of engines. The cacophony of preparations filled his ears, from sergeants shouting orders to the grinding crunch of tank treads upon the deck to the hydraulic squeal of missile racks being loaded.

Destroyers and Reconnaissance Marines prowled up the boarding ramp of the Shadowhawk he waited under. Nex waited motionlessly as they passed, then slipped on his Destroyer-variant Mk IV helm. Autosenses hummed to life, painting his vision with targeting information and tactical displays. He dismissed most of them with a mental twitch; he found them to be mere distractions. Ensuring his long cameleoline cloak was in place and covering his equipment, he walked up the Shadowhawk ramp.

Reconnaissance Marines recoiled as they saw his dark armor, covered with scratches and nocks. He heard the little clicks of intra-squad vox communication. Finally one of them stepped forward with a curt nod. "Blood-Crow." His retinal display showed the speaker as one Legionary Sallahn. "We have mission parameters to adhere to upon the surface."

"I need the ride."

Another nod. "Understood. We pursue our separate objectives upon arrival."

Nex stayed near the assault ramp as it ground shut. Astartes locked themselves into crash harnesses; he just held onto the long jump bar running overhead. He felt the stares of the others, Reconnaissance and Destroyer squads alike.

_Ill-omened_, they called him. _Madman._

True enough.

The Shadowhawk shuddered; it wasn't taking off, he registered dimly. Another shudder. Ah. The _Shadow_ was firing its main guns. Bombardment cannons mighty enough to level unprotected moons shook the battle-barge with each volley.

Nex waited silently. He knew the assembled fleet must be in position, if the _Shadow _was firing. He'd overheard some of the conversations about the retribution fleet. The gathered might of this many Astartes Legions was a sight to move a man to awe. The very idea of it had reduced remembrancers to tears. The order of the galaxy had been upended in one fell swoop, and nothing would ever be the same again.

Or so he'd heard.

As far as Nex was concerned, things hadn't changed much. Let the others worry about politics and rulership. Of terms like "Traitor" and "Loyalist." Of brother against brother, demigod against demigod. Of Heresy.

He had people to kill.


	2. Murder

**Planetfall, Minus Two Minutes Terran Sidereal**

The Shadowhawk shook in the air as it plummeted for the blasted surface of Isstvan V. Nex hadn't moved from his spot, away from the others. He heard the crew talking through the open doors to the cockpit; they spoke of landing zones, target locks, and fire density. They sounded… worried? Was that the term?

A strange idea, for that to be coming from Astartes.

"We blacken the sky," one of the Reconnaissance Legionaries muttered. "This many craft, they can't possibly miss us all."

"It looks like the Iron Tenth are taking the brunt of it," another said. "Mad bastards _wanted_ to drop into the middle of the line."

"The Gorgon's angry. Heard Fulgrim tried to recruit him to Horus' cause."

Nex ignored the chatter; he supposed it was too late to pick a quieter Shadowhawk.

The transport bucked as something slammed into it with a screech of metal. The shaking increased. "Incoming flak," one of the pilots called. "Engaging stealth countermeasures."

"They're not targeting us," another crew member said. "It's just general fire." Another impact.

"That doesn't matter if they fill the skies!"

The Shadowhawk groaned, metal screeching as it dove for the surface. Nex tightened his grip; he'd made the mistake once of freestanding in a Thunderhawk when enemy fire brought it down.

More rattling impacts shook the craft. Legionnaires cursed in their harnesses; the amount of incidental hits for unaimed fire spoke to the sheer volume the traitors were sending up. More than one blamed the Blood-Crow's presence. "Thirty seconds to deck!"

Nex activated the cameleoline inlays embedded in his armor with a thought. He watched his outstretched arm shimmer and turn the same dark gray of the compartment interior, mimicking his surroundings. The long flowing nanoweave of his cloak did the same, rendering him into a hazy blur.

"Full spread!" The Reconnaissance sergeant yelled over the rumbling. "Maintain fire discipline! Mark targets and zones of domination! Do not engage unless necessary! Remember, we are coordinating with Legion command!"

The Shadowhawk gave a shuddering lurch as it pulled up from its suicidal dive. Retro jets fired with a kick that threatened to knock Nex from his feet. He swayed with the impact, shifting his stance in anticipation of-

The forward ramp dropped with a whisper of modified hydraulics. Nex was already halfway down by the time it touched the ground. He sprinted over the dry volcanic ground, footsteps silent upon the black earth. Even among a Legion renowned for its stealth skills, Nex was a cut above most of them.

He heard the Reconnaissance squad follow down the ramp, hazy figures in their own cameleoline armor. The Destroyers followed, nowhere near as stealthy. They advanced, moving towards the massive fortress line at the head of the Urgall Depression.

Nex left them all behind as he roamed forward. None of his Legion attempted to join him. He didn't mind: fewer people to get in his way.

War erupted across the entirety of his autosenses, on a scale and savagery unlike anything he'd ever seen. The Raven Guard's vanguard forces were landing on the right flank of the traitor fortifications, as Ferrus Manus had planned – insisted rather. Bleak rock outcroppings dominated the terrain here; some of them were so vast they formed their own plateaus. Fresh craters, smoking scars, and shattered stone marked where the orbital bombardment had punished the land. The broken ground formed steep canyons and cliffs from the black earth; maneuver here would be a matter of sudden and close contact with the enemy.

Kaedes Nex smiled to himself.

Excellent.

Tracers and beams filled the sky, carving bright trails against the backdrop of roiling black clouds the width of the horizon. The loyalist bombardment had been so powerful it disrupted the region's weather patterns, drafting storms from the rent atmosphere. Fiery downward trails heralded the descent of drop pods, gunships, and transporters. Blossoms of flame winked where traitor weapons found loyalist vehicles, but their numbers proved impossible to stop.

Flashes filled the primary zone of the Urgall Depression to his left. The Iron Hands Primarch led his sons in a frontal assault against the Warmaster's forces, hammering the traitors in an implacable advance. And the heavy support hadn't even arrived yet.

Nex's enhanced vision picked out the descent of Raven Guard Assault squads, jump packs flaring in freefall to orient them towards strike zones. He'd considered a jump pack once, the way some Destroyers and Moritats used them to close the distance to their prey. But that meant committing to a noisy, open approach, and Nex found that he preferred stalking his targets quietly.

The hunt was the only time he… _felt_ anything.

The first wave of black drop pods bearing the icons of the Nineteenth slammed down into the earth, sending more sprays of dust, dirt, and rock into the air. Ramps slammed down, disgorging power armored Marines by the hundreds. Monstrous Kharybdis Assault Claws touched down on spindle-like legs; access hatches irised open to reveal Cataphractii suits of dark gray marked with intricate etchings – the Deliverer elite. Land Speeders and jetbikes flitted down through the air from transporters in low-altitude flights.

The Raven Guard assault did not go unanswered. Heavy bolters opened fire from concealed and dug-in strongpoints, lacing the sky with fist-sized mass-reactive rounds. Plasma and bolter fire skimmed the ground, cutting into black-armored Marines. The first enemies showed themselves as they surged from dug-in pits that had survived the bombardment. They wore sea-green armor emblazoned with a stylized eye: the Raven Guard had engaged the Sons of Horus.

The vanguard kept up the offensive, hurling themselves into short ranged firefights and diving headlong into bloody melees with their jump packs. Gunfire echoed: sharp bolter cracks and the lower, bass roars of heavy cannons. The stony ground forced the opposing Astartes on the ground into tight, twisting canyons. Sons of Horus assault squads rose into the air on plumes of flame, engaging their Raven Guard counterparts in midair duels. Blood poured out onto the ground where boots and treads ground it into filthy mud. Nex moved through the carnage, just a flicker of blurred movement in the chaos.

The Blood-Crow found his first victims in a blasted crater that had once been a dugout. Whatever munitions had hit it had torn it open to the sky above and rendered most of the Sons of Horus squad within into gobbets of ruined meat and armor fragments. Four remained, clutching bolters and covering fire sectors towards the landing sites.

Nex had already circled around behind. He dropped down from the broken stone outcropping above the crater, a Fulcrum in each hand. One of the enemy Legionnaires started turning – Nex downed him first with a round through the left eye, shattering through the dull red eye lens. Three more shots followed before another quarter second had passed; accelerator coils launched slugs at such high velocities that they left distorted trails through the air. Nex didn't even feel the recoil.

Four shots, four ki- _three_ kills. Nex scowled as the fourth Son of Horus turned and lunged, ignoring the gaping hole in his faceplate and the blood oozing from his mangled cheek. The wounded Space Marine drove into Nex with a tackle, knocking the pistol from his right hand. Nex hammered his elbow into broken faceplate, drawing a pained grunt as he drove ceramite shards into torn flesh. A wrench and a twist of his victim's arm spun his body away. Hand freed, he drew a combat knife. Running on long instinct, his blade was already halfway to his victim's kidney before he remembered the thick armor. Repositioning his other hand, Nex hauled the other Marine's head back with a vicious tug, reached around, and plunged the blade in through the softer neck joint to the hilt.

He wrenched the blade around, sawing it back and forth as he clutched the Son of Horus's head in an elbow grip. There was surprisingly little blood, he thought. This was the first time he'd experienced Astartes physiology working against him. He slapped aside multiple elbow blows; it took an inordinate amount of sawing before his victim finally stopped struggling. He released his grip and let the corpse slump to the battered earth.

The Blood-Crow retrieved his pistol. Four ki- _three_ kills. The last Son of Horus rolled over, bolter raised to-

Nex shot him through the mouth-grill, angling the round to lance up through the brain. The Marine slumped; his bolter thudded onto his chest and slid off.

Nex felt a rare twinge of… hmm. He wasn't sure if he was annoyed, or impressed. That was the most effort he'd needed to spend for so few kills in years – decades, even. This would be… what was the word? Ah. _Fun._

His cameleoline flickered, returning to normal operation after the flurry of activity. The Blood-Crow stalked on, leaving the crater of corpses behind. He glanced over to his right; a hundred meters away a Dark Fury squad smashed into a Sons of Horus Reaver position. Lightning claws tore through ceramite and flesh. Bolter rounds, chainblades, and power weapons answered.

He didn't move to join the melee, but moved off the other way. His brothers would decide that fight on their own, without his intervention. They both preferred it that way.

The memories rose as he hunted, flittering about his mind like phantoms he'd never been able to exorcise.

* * *

The Primarch's pardon, after the liberation of Lycaeus.

The others had shunned him even then, he remembered. He'd already borne the title of "Blood-Crow" among the freedom fighters. And even before that.

They'd called him that on Kiavahr, when he was a boy. He hadn't had a proper name, or at least he didn't remember one. He didn't remember when he'd killed his first man, or the – was it several dozen? – after that. He'd lost track of how many he'd killed before they finally caught him and dumped him on the prison moon.

Corax had found him while plotting his uprising. Even then the Primarch had been recognizably _Other_, something far more than human. Corax had offered him a chance for freedom – if he brought his lethal skills to the rebellion. The pale giant laid one condition on him; that he would kill only those whom Corax designated. The boy had agreed, more for the opportunity to take lives than the chance for freedom.

Some – many, even – had wondered why Corax sought out the empty-eyed murderer who seemed to regard human life as some curiosity to pluck apart. Others whispered that like recognized like; that Corax felt a solitary kinship with the disquieting boy.

The murderer cared not; he fought for the uprising as he'd agreed. He did so alone for the most part, stalking guards, officials, and overseers that Corax marked for death. He left their corpses in shadowed tunnels for others to find. Or rather, he left parts of their corpses. Close enough.

The liberation came. He didn't feel any different. More whispers, that some shining figure of gold had visited Corax, spoke with the uprising's leader before the nuclear bombardment of Kiavahr. It didn't matter to the young man. Life continued much as it had before.

The others continued to avoid him, finding alternate routes when they noticed him in the dark tunnels of the former prison moon – though that wasn't often, given his penchant for the shadows. More than one of the newly liberated inhabitants petitioned Corax to quietly eliminate him.

In a rare moment of curiosity, he'd asked Corax what his response had been.

The demigod had chuckled. He said he'd told the others they were free to take Nex if they felt capable of it.

Nobody had tried.

Then the revelation of the Imperium, of the Emperor and his Legiones Astartes, of the Primarch project, of the Legion bearing Corax's genetic records. Corax rose to take his place as master of the Nineteenth Legion, and brought many of his freedom fighters to join the ranks. Among them was the quiet murderer, now known as Kaedes Nex.

He remembered little of the implantation process – the transformation from mortal murderer to transhuman… well, still a murderer, albeit a sanctioned one. Mostly there'd been pain: the agonies of a late transformation. The Legion Apothecaries said the process should have been fatal by any expectations. Others joked that the universe could not let so fine a killer die without first doing more of what he was so good at.

Ascension to the ranks of the Astartes did nothing for the others' acceptance of him, or his connection to greater humanity. Controller Ephrenia, who'd been present at Corax's discovery on Lycaeus, had commented on it once. Nex had walked through the command bridge of the _Shadow of the Emperor_, to report a mission success to the Primarch. Crew and serfs backed away from him, as if the blood coating his armor was somehow anathema. He didn't understand the fuss; of course feeding a man through jet turbines would make a mess.

Ephrenia had frowned and shook her head as he passed. Nex paused, looked back at her blankly. "It's like the parts that make up most men aren't there in you," she'd said.

Kaedes hadn't understood what she was talking about. He'd cut, shot, stabbed, bludgeoned, and otherwise mutilated enough men that he was reasonably certain he possessed all the same parts, and in the same places. Maybe even more, as an Astartes. After all, how many mortal men could lay claim to being able to survive losing a heart? He'd shrugged and moved on.

Humans were so strange.


	3. The Balance of Battle

**Planetfall, Plus One Point Two Hours Terran Sidereal**

Lascannon beams sliced through the dust-choked air. The quartet of incandescent beams shattered through the side armor of a Raven Guard Predator, coring the battle tank through. Ammunition and promethium reserves cooked off in a lethal conflagration; detonating shells flattened surrounding Marines and pelted them with shrapnel. The Sons of Horus fire point covered a natural choke point funneling Raven Guard armored assets into a winding, narrow canyon. It had been adapted from tunnels running through the volcanic rock formations and the heavy support Legionnaires within mercilessly punished any vehicles moving in to reinforce their brethren who'd gone in on jump packs and drop pods.

The four lascannon-wielding Marines stepped back from the firing slit. Overworked charge packs squealed and whined as practiced hands disconnected them. Another four Sons of Horus bearing heavy weapons stepped up to the firing slit, joining the squad sergeant as he scanned for more targets. He looked down at the auspex in his hand, holding it just below the edge of the firing slit. A flicker of motion caught his eye; he looked back up-

The Fulcrum round punched through his faceplate, dropping him to the rough stone floor in the aftermath of its sharp, crackling gunshot. The other Marines hefted their bulky weapons, looking for the threat. A pair of inverted heavy pistols swung down from the top of the slit. Distorted trails traced lines from muzzles to helmets. One fell immediately, back of his helm blown out in a spray of bone and brain. Another growled in anger and pain as shattered fragments lacerated his face and put his eyes out. The rest shrugged heavy weapons aside, drawing bolt pistols to better fight in close quarters.

The hand cannons disappeared and a frag grenade slipped in through the aperture. It detonated with a dull _crump_, showering the traitor Marines with razor fragments. They opened fire, putting bolt rounds into the stone lip to drive their assailant back. No response came in and the ones at the flanks advanced on either side, moving towards the firing slit.

Outside, the Blood-Crow clung to the rock face upside-down. He ran through the layout of the interior in his mind, ignoring the impacts chipping away at the edge of the opening beneath him. Dead sergeant, no threat. Dead Marine, no opportunity. The blinded one, still growling in fury, clutching his charged plasma cannon.

Nex smiled. He drew one pistol, lowered himself fractionally, and swung down to aim into the slit. The blinded Marine had withdrawn into the middle of the squad. Excellent. A single Fulcrum round pierced the volatile exciter chamber on his plasma cannon. The only warning the Sons of Horus received was the sudden high-pitched squeal in their midst as the plasma charge spiked into catastrophic overload. Nex was already pulling himself up the stone cliff outside, eyes squeezed shut.

The plasma cannon detonated like a micro-sun in the confined dugout. Nex smiled again as he listened to the final agonized screams of the Legionaries caught within. He paused near the top of his climb, looking around for more targets. It wasn't hard; Sons of Horus squads and vehicles continued to engage their Raven Guard counterparts in a lethal series of hit-and-fade skirmishes. Thousands of corpses littered the black ground, green and black armor punctured, twisted, and shattered.

Heavy vehicles crushed dirt, stone, and flesh under their treads as they moved towards the chaotic battle lines. Spartan tanks carried Terminators forward, slewing around smoking wrecks. Fellblades and Cerberus destroyers unleashed cataclysmic firepower against lesser vehicles, destroying squadrons at a time with contemptuous volleys. Land Speeders and jetbikes fought midair duels and juked around heavier fire.

Over an hour into the battle, both sides had committed everything. Macro-transports had deposited the Titans of Legio Atarus into the Urgall Depression; the giant war machines towered over all else on the battlefield. In response the traitor engines of Legio Mortis pounded them from the fortification walls of Horus' stronghold with long ranged fire. Errant shots incinerated human auxiliaries and support crews. Gunships and strike craft made strafing runs against fortified bunkers. Anti-air emplacements filled the sky with beams and hard rounds.

This was war on a scale the Great Crusade had rarely known, concentrated into several dozen square kilometers. Nex hauled himself over the edge of the cliff and slunk into the shadows of another stone outcropping. The air practically hummed with the charge of energy weapons. Eyes drawn skyward, he watched his next victims deliver themselves to him.

The remains of a Sons of Horus assault squad landed heavily on the plateau less than twenty meters away. Only the sergeant and four others remained, and they all bore fresh wounds and battered armor. Jetpacks fizzled and sparked, and chainblades sported teeth worn down to nubs. Nex's enhanced hearing picked up the whine of overtaxed servos. The sergeant tore his rent Mark II helmet off, revealing a shaved head with a bloody gash running from scalp to chin.

The sergeant spat a wad of bloody saliva. "Bastard birds can fight, I'll give them that."

One of the other Legionaries tossed his chainsword aside; the motor had seized up and the teeth were gone. "Where in Cthonia's bowels is Kargen's squad? They were supposed to be covering our flank."

"They met the Raven."

"Damn. I always hated him, but he was a good soldier."

"We just need to hold them a while longer," the sergeant said. "Fall back to grid Gamma-Six: we'll-"

His head burst in a spray of blood and bone as Nex pushed away from the outcropping and shot him. The Moritat was already transitioning to the next target as he ran. He was a hazy blur as he put round after round into breached armor and wounded flesh. Easy prey. One managed to snap off a pair of bolt pistol shots; Nex's refractor field deflected them away. His return shots through the throat nearly decapitated the Legionary.

The last victim pulled a combat knife and hurled himself towards Nex. The Blood-Crow swayed aside from the leading chainblade strike and the follow-through knife stab, letting his opponent lunge past. He turned and shot the Son of Horus through his rear knee joint. The leg buckled but the Marine managed to half-turn, hurling his knife at the blurry Nex. The blade clattered off his chestplate, adding another scratch to hundreds of others.

Nex stepped in and put a shot through the Legionary's elbow joint. The Son of Horus growled as his chainsword slipped from fingers that no longer responded. Nex slammed his boot into the wounded knee as he holstered one pistol. Moving with a speed that surpassed even most Astartes, he reached around with both arms. His free hand snagged the jaw of the Marine's helmet and he wrenched it to the side, exposing the neck joint. He shoved one Fulcrum against the seal, angling it downwards, and put two shots into the Legionary's chest cavity. Each heavy round ruptured an enhanced heart and the Marine grew still.

Nex left the corpse still kneeling on the dark stone. He walked away from the dead squad, reloading as he went. A Javelin attack speeder screeched by overhead, engines aflame. A lascannon shot obliterated the stricken craft, scattering debris over a hundred square meters. Nex casually stepped aside from a piece of engine cowling as it sparked off the ground a meter away. He turned towards the source of the lascannon shot; the volume of dust filling the air made it hard to see what-

Ah. Dirty white and blue armor surged out from the Warmaster's stronghold. Squadrons of armored vehicles clustered around super-heavies bristling with guns. Charging Legionaries surged forwards in massed formations of infantry like long bygone eras.

The World Eaters had committed, as only the homicidally insane Legion could.

The forces of the maddened Legion hit the dispersed forces of the Raven Guard forward line – and pushed it back in a frenzy of gunfire and blades. Berserk Rampager squads crashed into Raven Guard units, screaming and hacking in wild abandon with archaic gladiator weapons. Their assault squads demonstrated none of the precision or finesse of either the Raven Guard or the Sons of Horus, slamming into their opponents like guided missiles – with much the same result.

Nex fell back; such massed open warfare was neither his strength nor his preference. He made for another stone outcropping, large enough to comfortably land a squadron of Baneblades atop. The base spread out and down like massive roots, filled with dark shadows in the nooks and crannies. Such terrain was more to his liking.

A figure in the distance caught his eye and Nex felt his twin hearts surge with adrenaline. This was an enemy who overmatched him on every level.

* * *

Angron, Primarch of the World Eaters.

The Red Angel towered over his legion, clad in bronzed armor. Though World Eater super-heavy tanks were larger in an absolute sense, none had his sheer _presence_. The Primarch covered meters of ground at a time, moving more like a force of nature than anything resembling humanity.

Angron's devastating charge carried him into the forward Raven Guard elements. He moved with shocking speed despite his size, leaving his gene-sons behind. Twin axes reaped Raven Guard lives, rising and falling nearly faster than the eye could see. Frantic bolter fire pattered off his armor; Angron gave no indication he was even aware of the impacts. He butchered Legionary, Sergeant, and line-captain alike without distinction. Where he went the Loyalists retreated or died – frequently both. Deliverer Terminators sacrificed themselves by the squad, piling themselves upon Angron to slow him down. The wild Primarch cast them aside and lay in with his axes. They died in silence, stoic to the last in accordance with the traditions of the Old Nineteenth.

World Eaters Terminators followed in Angron's bloody wake, stomping mangled corpses into further mush in their heavy Cataphractii armor. Power armored Legionaries formed the bulk of the charging mass behind them. Nex observed their arms and tactics with a passing interest; the World Eaters had always been known for their predilection towards violent shock assaults, but this seemed something more. This frenzy, this… obsession for closing with the enemy to rend him apart at murderously intimate distances…

For a moment Nex thought he could- No. He couldn't understand them. He could appreciate their dedication to the craft however, even as he started planning out how to increase his tally. The World Eater horde spread out like a tide washing over flat sands, driving a wedge between the Raven Guard and their fellow Legions. That would be… what was the term the Shadow Captains used? Tactically undesirable.

Armored vehicles sought out their counterparts in long-range duels as World Eaters on foot swept forward. The Raven Guard had always been quick to respond to such brute tactics however; squads made fighting withdrawals, covering one another with disciplined fire to bleed their berserker foes and increase engagement distance. The World Eaters came on heedless of their losses. Seeker and recon squads baited groups away from the mass, leading them towards the wastes for assault squads to descend and ambush in a flurry of blades, bolts, and blood.

Nex killed his first World Eaters in the shadows of the small stone mountain. He heard them before he saw them, screaming their fury into the skies. A dozen Marines rounded the mouth of the miniature stone canyon running into the base of the hill, armor spattered with gore. Trembling fists clutched bloody chainaxes and bolt pistols. They must have been hunting another group of Raven Guard; the sergeant somehow maintained the presence of mind to operate an auspex scanner. Bare-headed, he sniffed the air. Bulging implants studded the back of a many-scarred head. He swept the auspex around the canyon, then paused before panning it back slowly towards where Nex crouched motionless in the shadows.

The sergeant raised a hand, pointing towards- Nex shot him through the unprotected head twice and burst into a sideways run as the rest of the World Eaters charged. His free hand slipped down to a belt pouch. Bolt rounds slammed into his armor and tore into his long cloak. Nex kept moving, trying to maintain his distance from the berserk pack as he headed for a broken copse of stones. He fired back, crippling one World Eater. His other hand whipped out from his pouch and hurled one of his shroud bombs to the ground between him and the closing Legionnaires.

The grenade detonated with a concussive flash. Shimmering gray smoke billowed out, spreading laterally across the ground and rising up into the air. The electromagnetically charged fog scrambled sensors and scanners, and the World Eater charge faltered – barely – as they ran headlong into the smoke and autosenses malfunctioned. Such a minor thing was nowhere near enough to stop the bloodthirsty Astartes and they plowed through the smoke, more eager than ever to close on the lone Raven Guard.

Nex had already reached the edge of the stone copse; he turned, Fulcrums in both hands, and pressed the triggers as quickly as he could while backpedalling. Slugs hammered the approaching World Eaters, dropping the first two with massive torso wounds. The rest kept coming, heedless of the rounds scything into them. Nex retreated further into the stones all the while. More movement, in the canyon beyond this first squad.

He couldn't stop them all.

They would kill him. The thought didn't bother Nex, though he knew it was supposed to. This was the inevitable result of-

Incandescent blue bolts lanced in from behind, accompanied by the high-pitched screeches of plasma weapon fire. The rapid barrage cut through the World Eaters lagging behind; plasma bolts burned through armor, flesh, and bone. The leading berserkers didn't even seem to notice.

Nex dodged the closest World Eater's chainaxe; the blow shattered a stone pillar in a spray of shards. His return shots punctured both eye lenses and deformed the back of the Legionary's helmet from the inside. The target collapsed facedown. Nex had no time to appreciate the rivulets of blood spreading from the Legionary's head. Two more World Eaters lunged in from opposite sides, homing in on his blurry form from the gunfire.

A gladius glanced off his thigh, making the cameleoline inlays flicker wildly. A fist smashed into the side of his helmet; Nex turned with the blow, whirled around, and dropped the World Eater with a shot through the mouth-grill. The accuracy required to reliably stop an Astartes was a delightful challenge. Another one charged in. The next moments flew by in a scramble of activity: rapid dodges against flurries of maddened blows. Nex took several hits in a second despite his efforts.

A chainsword screeched in towards his head; his refractor field slowed and deflected the blow enough for him to just duck under it. Nex quick-stepped into a side kick, snapping his boot into the World Eater's gut. Physics took its course and the maddened Astartes doubled over. The helmet snapped down and forward, exposing the barest edge of the back collar joint. Nex struck out with one hand, placed it on the back of the World Eater's head like a captain observing an oath of moment, and pushed down. His other hand brought a Fulcrum up and around, placed the muzzle against the exposed neck joint.

The World Eater twitched and gurgled as the electrically propelled round tore through the length of his spine. He fell, unable to even scream his rage into the black earth. Next turned towards the last World Eater-

A furious mass of white and blue plate plowed into him, bowling him over in a frenzy of fists, knees, and blades. The Legionary followed him down, pinning him with his armored bulk. Nex deflected two stabs from a combat blade, felt a third scratch a deep gouge across his faceplate with a squeal of metal alloy against ceramite. The World Eater head-butted him, driving the sloped point of his Mark Three helm into Nex's. Pain flooded his senses as the impact knocked his head back against his rear collar.

The Moritat-Prime twisted his hips, pushing the World Eater top him further up and creating just enough space. His hand came up, pressed the Fulcrum against the seam under the Legionary's breastplate, and pressed the trigger repeatedly until the magazine ran dry. The other Astartes jerked and his backpack generator erupted in angry sparks. Nex rolled aside from under the Legionary, snatched up a fallen chainaxe.

The World Eater remained in place on his hands and knees, viscous blood oozing in fat droplets from the hole through his belly. Nex stared down at the sight for an instant; at that range his shots must have penetrated all the way through the torso and punctured the generator from within. The World Eater growled as he strained against both his grievous wounds and the sudden unpowered weight of his armor.

The Blood-Crow stepped over and hooked the axe's barbed heel bit underneath the edge of the Mark III helmet. He pulled it up into place, felt one of the chain teeth bite into the flexible joint- and pressed the activation rune.

The spraying blood painted such… fascinating patterns.

The World Eater didn't have much of anything beyond a ragged stump of a neck by the time Nex released the axe handle. He snatched the falling helmet from the air, let the mess of gore and bone slide out to the ground in a wet slither. He looked into the dull eye lenses; this kill was worth marking. Nex holstered his Fulcrum, drew his worn knife, and added another notch to the countless ones scarring his left pauldron.

"Nicely done." Nex looked up as another figure emerged from the shroud bomb's smoke; Melchar held both his smoking plasma pistols, covering World Eater corpses. Heat distortion ran skywards from his single thruster jump pack as the Moritat stepped over blasted bodies. "You taking trophies now?'

Nex realized he still held the World Eater's helmet and dropped it without further ado. "What is it?"

"You're welcome, by the way. I know you're just overcome with gratitude, unable to find the words to unleash the poet inside."

Nex said nothing, just reloaded his Fulcrums.

"Never mind," Melchar sighed. "Did you deactivate your vox connections again?"

"Transmissions reveal positions."

"And allow for coordination and communication. Such as orders from the Primarch, for instance."

That got Nex's attention. "What were his orders?"

"New targets of priority: eliminate Twelfth Legion command personnel."

"Angron?"

Melchar laughed. "Not even you, Huntsman. Only the Raven can take him. No, we're taking out captains, sergeants – disrupt their leadership, and most of the mad bastards fall to pieces."

Nex looked around at the scattered corpses. "But they do that anyway."

"That's not what… never mind." Melchar looked away towards where the sounds of the furious battle continued. "Lord Corax wants us to disrupt the World Eaters driving between us and the Iron Tenth."

"Affirmative." Nex started walking towards the little canyon's mouth, then paused. He was supposed to do something in situations like this. What was it again? Ah. "Thanks for the update."

"Blood-Crow." The call stopped Nex. Melchar almost never called him that. He looked back at the other Moritat, both their faces hidden beneath implacable facemasks. "Try not to die," Melchar said. "You're still needed."

Strange thing to say. Nex stared silently as Melchar took to the air with a burst of his jump pack, launching off to seek more targets. He started off himself, walking at first before breaking into an easy jog. Melchar's words echoed in his mind. What did it mean to be needed? His cameleoline flickered and settled as he ran – and as the memories resurged.

* * *

He'd asked the Primarch once, years ago. "What will become of us when we are no longer needed?"

Corax had raised an eyebrow, looked down at Nex. "Not like you to ask something like that, Kaedes."

"You're the one who told me to work on my… integration skills." Nex shrugged. For some reason he'd always found it easier to speak with the Primarch than any others, though he'd always heard most people found it otherwise. "I've overheard members of the Thirteenth speak of it – often. The Moritat cadres in particular."

"Do they now? How like Roboute's sons, planning for the peace before the Crusade is finished. My brother – ever the idealist."

"And you're not?" Nex crossed his arms. "The Raven Lord freed a prison moon purely so he could recruit its inmates into his Legion?"

"And the others say you have no sense of humor."

Nex stared blankly for a long moment.

"Tell me, Kaedes. How many kill markings do you have carved into your armor?"

"I stopped counting at… two thousand and seventeen."

"Quite a tally."

Another shrug. "Pales compared to yours."

"True." Corax grew silent for a moment. "My father once spoke of the necessity of driving back the darkness of Old Night, of bringing illumination to humanity across the galaxy."

"Ironic then that you taught your Legion to operate in the shadows."

"Not irony, Kaedes. Purpose." The Primarch glanced around his chambers once, at the many pools of darkness he'd carefully cultivated in the design." We operate from the shadows, and we do terrible things, but always with purpose. Always for the ultimate better of humanity, of the Imperium."

Nex said nothing; Corax _believed _– saw and comprehended and embraced that ideal. The Primarch fought for a cause.

Nex just fought because it was all he knew.

"You've been the tip of the spear more than once." Corax's lip curled as he echoed the phrase of Horus and his glory-hungry Legion. "The instrument of vengeance. You tell me, Kaedes. Do you believe the day will come that the Moritat – or indeed the Astartes – are no longer required?"

"I... don't think on it much."

A ghost of a smile crossed Corax's face. "Has it occurred to you that in some ways the Moritat are to the Legions what the Astartes as a whole are to humanity?"

"Because I'm such a master of philosophy?"

"Of course; that's why I keep you around." Corax chuckled, then grew somber. "Think on it, Kaedes. The Moritat bear upon themselves onerous duties, dark burdens. You are called upon to perform deeds the rest of the Legion cannot do – or should not do without sacrificing its character. What is that but a reflection of what the Astartes are meant to be for all humanity?"

Nex said nothing, merely cocked his head to the side. Corax nodded once; the audience was over. Nex blinked after a second, returned the nod, and walked away like a shadow.

Only much later did it occur to him that the Primarch hadn't answered his question.


	4. Betrayal

**Planetfall, Plus Three Point Four Hours**

The World Eater line captain slid to the ground, missing the top half of his skull. His sheared head implants sparked futilely, sending signals to half a brain no longer present. _No helmet,_ Nex thought. _Poor choice. _He slid back behind a stone plinth as the captain's squad responded with a storm of bolter fire, cratering and chipping the dark rock.

Dust and dirt flew as a squad of Raven Guard Destroyers landed nearby, bolt pistols blazing. One hoisted a missile launcher, humming on its suspensor web. It gave a concussive cough; the customized missile soared out into the midst of the World Eaters and detonated in a shower of radioactive fragments and dust. Legionaries staggered and convulsed in their unbreached armor, collapsing as the deadly energy flooded their systems. Survivors pushed themselves back up, hefted suddenly heavy chainaxes, and stumbled towards the Destroyers. Bolt rounds cracked, cutting into Twelfth Legion Marines.

Nex added his fire to the fight, walking rounds up the line from the back. The squad staggered again under the weight of fire and the continuing rad poisoning. Post-human soldiers collapsed one by one, fearless in their frenzy but ultimately unable to resist the merciless attentions of the Raven Guard. The World Eaters joined their captain upon Isstvan's black soil after taking dozens of shots.

Nex was already gone, moving away without acknowledgment to or from his fellow Legionnaires. The Destroyers disengaged in good order- but not fast enough. An explosion engulfed three of them, sending sprays of dust, dirt, armor and body parts into the air. The other Destroyers launched off with their jump packs, narrowly escaping another artillery shell. They didn't get far; streams of high-velocity shells tore into them. Raven Guard came apart in the air, scattering blood and spall fragments in a macabre rain. The World Eaters Sicaran tank that killed them kept rolling as if nothing had occurred.

More movement in the skies caught Nex's eye as he prowled the edges of the apocalyptic battle. The stars fell; a blizzard of lights, shadow, and movement filled the panorama of the heavens above. The second wave of the Imperium's response to the Warmaster's perfidy had arrived.

Hundreds of orbital landers, gunships, transports descended through the tumultuous skies. They'd only been pinpricks when Nex noticed them, but they grew rapidly with all the speed of a Legion orbital assault.

Four Legions, as Nex recalled. The combined might of so many gathered Astartes would utterly decide matters on Isstvan. Already the forward Raven Guard elements were pulling back, disengaging from the World Eater advance in anticipation of reinforcements. Nex saw tactical and assault squads withdraw under the covering fire of tanks and Land Speeders. Terminators fell back ponderously, hacking their way free of World Eaters with methodical sweeps of their power axes.

The second wave drew closer by the second, ships growing in size constantly. Nex took the opportunity to carve several more notches from the last hour into his armor. The World Eaters had proven… satisfyingly challenging to hunt. He slipped through the black wastes, stepping over ruptured corpses and passing between burning vehicle husks. There were shockingly few wounded; trans-human physiology ensured that most Astartes fought to the bitter last – that only in death did duty end.

Nex found one of the wounded: a half-dead World Eater, missing both his legs and right arm. Despite the wounds when he saw Nex approaching he struggled to raise a bolt pistol from the muck. The Blood-Crow stepped over, pressed down on the hand clutching the pistol with his foot. He drew his knife and kneeling down, pried the cursing World Eater's head back and dug the point in.

He stood up a minute later, glancing around. The battle had fallen into a lull as both factions disengaged and withdrew. Seconds drew into minutes; Raven Guard walking wounded retreated towards their rear staging areas. Across the valley Salamander forces did the same. Only the Iron Hands appeared to still be on the assault, driving forward in some nihilistic fury as they fought and bled against the massed forces of the Emperor's Children.

The four reinforcing Legions were landing behind the initial drop points, already reinforcing their staging points with Astartes discipline and alacrity. Word Bearers, Night Lords, Iron Warriors, Alpha Legion. A concentrated force to crush sectors, compressed into the span of kilometers.

Rank after rank of fresh Legion forces serried forth: infantry and vehicles moving in conjunction to form a perimeter around the Urgall Depression. The reinforcements gathered in formations to support-

Nex blinked. Something about the force disposition was… wrong. The others didn't seem to notice, kept moving towards the newcomers in weary relief as they reformed their unit cohesion. Nex was neither a line tactician nor a macro strategist. He'd never possessed the effortless affinity for battle command the way some Shadow Captains did. The way the others described it, he had an affinity for one thing – murder. He'd always recognized its presence: that charged moment an instant before all the arrangements came together to snuff out the life of another being.

And this…

This was murder most exquisite.

Kaedes felt a twinge of admiration for the mind that had orchestrated this masterpiece. He watched a captain in battered Mk III plate leading platoons of Raven Guard in the distance. They headed uphill for the rapid deployment barricades of a joint Word Bearer and Night Lord contingent, all arraigned for battle. The captain raised his hand in greeting, received a similar acknowledgement from a Word Bearer commander in deep crimson armor. The captain took several steps closer, then paused and stiffened. He'd finally realized.

Too late.

The Word Bearer and Night Lord line opened fire as one. The concussive discharge of thousands of bolters packed into so tight a space formed a shockwave of overpressure that blew dust and dirt clear, as if the earth itself recoiled at the treachery. The captain fell, sliced apart by a lascannon beam as heavy weapons and vehicles added their voices to the slaughter. The front ranks of the regrouping Raven Guard practically vanished in a mist of blood, organs, and armor fragments.

All across the Urgall Depression the 'reinforcements' attacked. Already depleted, Raven Guard and Salamander units went down by the hundreds to merciless fire from massed Word Bearer and Night Lord Companies. The Eighth Legion's gunships screamed overhead, dropping chem munitions into triage and aid stations. Iron Warrior heavy artillery pieces shelled human auxiliaries, obliterating entrenched positions with contemptuous ease. Salamander and Iron Hands super-heavies died, rear hulls punctured before they could swing around to confront their betrayers. Alpha Legion infiltrator squads revealed themselves with sinister purpose, modified bolters punching rounds through power armor as they targeted Loyalist leaders.

The other Legions redoubled their assault. Sons of Horus, Emperor's Children, Death Guard, and World Eaters alike took the opportunity to drive forward in a hammer blow against loyalist Legions caught against a sudden anvil of treachery. The Iron Hands took the initial brunt of the renewed assault, caught well forward in Ferrus' zeal to confront Fulgrim. Angron, Mortarion, Horus himself – returned to the field, leading their Legion elites with all the confidence that victory was inevitable.

Nex paused for a moment; he realized he was witnessing… the remembrancers might have called it a pivotal moment in history, or the end of an era, or the overturning of a galactic order. He saw it in altogether more simple terms; the Imperium had just been murdered.

For another moment, he wished he could bring himself to feel some sense of loss or tragedy about the prospect.

He cocked his head and turned, looking for the closest targets. There was no victory to be found here, no possible way they could win. The sounds of extermination echoed through the air: the staccato cracks of thousands of bolters, hundreds of high-velocity shells, artillery rounds, and whines of plasma discharges. Titan weapons shook the air with each apocalyptic blast. The screams of the dying underlay it all.

A half dozen of the fanatical Legion descended on a nearby tactical squad on jump packs, armed with hand flamers and vicious barbed axes. They bellowed chants in some unknown language as they landed on jets of flame. Axe-rakes rose and fell, reaping through the battered squad. Exhausted of ammunition, the Raven Guard Legionaries laid in with knife and fist. The sergeant cut down one Word Bearer before two others tore him apart with the hooks on their weapons.

Nex moved in; his first pair of shots punctured a jump pack from behind. The next pair went through the Word Bearer's helmet as he turned to meet the unseen attacker. The others responded quickly; Nex rolled aside as sheets of flame engulfed him. His refractor field diverted some of it; the rest of the flamer wash ate away at the edges of his cameleoline cloak and burned out his armor's inset projectors.

He came back up firing. Heavy slugs cracked into armor, penetrating or deflecting as fate or chance dictated. The staggering rounds proved enough of a diversion for the Raven Guard survivors to tackle the Word Bearers and the fight devolved into a series of close quarters grapples; armor of pale granite against sable black. Moving closer, Nex ended things with systematic shots to Word Bearer heads at point blank range.

"Blood-Crow," one of the survivors said. "Our thanks."

He was supposed to say something encouraging during these sorts of things, Corax claimed. "Kill as many as you can before you die."

Close enough.

To his mild surprise the bloodied Legionaries saluted. "Well said, Blood-Crow." They moved off, scavenging munitions from the dead to continue the fight. Nex headed the other way, mindful of his exposure with his damaged cameleoline.

Chaos reigned. The Raven Guard were doomed; no strategic genius was necessary to comprehend that. The extermination devolved into dozens – hundreds – of individual, small-scale battles as the Raven Lord's Legion reverted to training and instinct, separating and splitting to avoid the enemy where they were strong. Unfortunately that proved to be nearly everywhere: a closing noose of ceramite, flesh, and malevolent hatred.

Grounded Raven Guard drop ships vanished in plasma detonations. Others attempted to return to the skies and shredded apart in the weight of tracers and beams from all sides of the Urgall Depression. The sheer, sudden numerical advantage of the Warmaster's forces had utterly swung the balance of calamity.

Kaedes Nex exercised his craft like never before as his Legion sought to drag as many traitors to the grave with them as they could. Though a mature Astartes possessed near eidetic memory he always perceived battles as luminary moments of murder, like a madman experiencing moments of lucidity.

He silenced a bellowing Word Bearers Chaplain with a trio of shots through the throat and skull, then vanished in a cloud of electromagnetic fog.

He ambushed a small Alpha Legion Headhunter squad, rising from the midst of a pile of Raven Guard corpses. Stepping into a grapple, his knife plunged into the trailing Legionary's throat as his other hand seized control of his victim's gun hand. Modified bolter rounds punched through the backs of the other three Alpha Legionnaires, destroying backpack generators and detonating within spines. He ripped the knife free, replaced it with the smoking bolter muzzle, and forced the Legionary's finger down on the trigger. His autosenses blanked at the concussive bang as blood and brain matter coated the side of his faceplate.

A Sons of Horus Centurion leading a chase into a shadowy canyon found his men dropping to sudden coordinated sharpshooter fire as Raven Guard stealth masters appeared from seemingly nowhere, clinging to perches halfway up the rocky crevices. Nex emerged from the shadows, weapon raised. The Centurion lifted his bloody gladius and saluted Nex – an instant before the Fulcrum round tore half his skull away. Nex slid back into the shadows; the Mor Deythan were already gone.

Massed fire lit the sky. He danced backwards, feet finding steady purchase between ruined corpses as he retreated from a group of over half a dozen laughing Legionaries in lightning-streaked midnight blue armor. Fellow murderers, all – Night Lords. He fired both pistols as he went; ammunition was a problem.

His Fulcrums clicked empty.

Ammunition was a _big_ problem.

Nex slammed the pistols back into their holsters. No time to reload. He hooked his boot under some fallen warrior's weapon at his feet, kicked it up before him, and snatched the grip out of the air. A part of his mind hoped it was loaded: this would be short-lived if-

It was. Two Night Lords exploded into steaming offal and melted armor as the melta hissed like an angry serpent. The others dove aside, snapping bolter rounds at him; two glanced away from his refractor field. Another detonated in his plastron. Spalling lacerated his side. He squeezed the trigger again and incinerated another Night Lord; the others leapt in, seeking to prevent more shots from the weapon meant to obliterate tanks.

The Night Haunter's sons tackled Nex, driving him to the ground. Two held his legs down and a third grappled his legs. The Night Lords sergeant approached, clutching a chainglaive. Revving the energized teeth, he lined it up over Nex's hearts.

A low-flying Fire Raptor detonated overhead; one of the wing stabilizers spun down across them like a divine rotary saw. The Night Lords never saw what hit them. The sergeant blinked in sudden shock as his chainglaive – and his forearm – fell away from his body. The stabilizer bisected the Legionary holding down Nex's right arm, kept going, and came to a halt forty meters away embedded in the ground.

Nex snatched the falling chainglaive out of the air with his suddenly free arm. The whirring blade sliced through the sergeant's armored knees without slowing, decapitated the Night Lord holding his legs, and punched down through the chest cavity of the one holding his other arm down. The spinning teeth painted such fascinating arcs of vaporizing blood in the air.

The sergeant died last as Nex swept to his feet, appropriated chainglaive scything up between his legs to spill fat, ropy strands of viscera onto the dark ground. Nex left the corpses and took the chainglaive; it was a good weapon.

He was forced to abandon it minutes later, blade embedded in Cataphractii thigh plate, haft sheared clean through by a power axe. Nex scrambled backwards through the swirling melee he'd found himself caught in; these foes he couldn't stand against. Braying World Eaters in ugly, patchwork Terminator suits rampaged through a multi-Legion fight. Raven Guard, Word Bearers, and Night Lords alike fell to wild swings of their monstrous axes. The ravening berserkers didn't seem to care who they cut down, just that the blood flowed.

Nex had been hoping to avoid getting caught in the midst of such a fight. A vain hope, given the intensity of the extermination – calling it a _battle_ was a gross misstatement. Backing away towards the edge of the melee, suddenly he was the only one left standing, all the others cut down in shocking speed.

Him, and four maddened Terminators.

Inconvenient.

He backpedaled: nothing he had could reliably kill anything in Cataphractii armor. No, that wasn't true. His hands went to his waist pouches. The World Eaters came on, ponderous in their monstrous armor but gaining speed like implacable locomotives, screaming their bloodlust all the while. Nex stretched his left arm out before him, dropped the shroud bomb at his feet.

The howling, broken Legionaries charged into the gray smoke. Nex was already gone, sprinting away. The lead World Eater never noticed the little cylinder he kicked over in his charge.

Ravenous green light flared to life as the phosphex bomb detonated. Proscribed chemical weapons from a dark age, the lambent green flames clung and burned through everything they contacted. Ceramite, metal, flesh, and bone. Not even Tactical Dreadnought Armor was proof against it.

Though they were caught in the center of the blaze, the World Eaters didn't scream. At least, not in pain. Denied their last opportunity to spill blood, they howled their rage until chemical flames consumed lungs and throats. Standing away, Nex watched silhouettes crumple in the inferno, a smile on his face at the glorious carnage. So _that _was why Corax had never let him use phosphex-

Incredibly, one of the World Eaters stumbled from the ongoing flames. The white and blue had boiled away from his armor, and only one hand still clutched an axe. Only a ragged, charred stump remained of the other hand. Nex raised his Fulcrums.

The target took eight shots before collapsing, armor still ablaze.

The Blood-Crow carved another mark into his armor.

* * *

But he couldn't change the greater outcome. Encircled and entrapped, company after company of Raven Guard died, fighting to the last as they attempted to break out. Wounded and low on ammunition, Nex hid away in ruins not of human origin amid the corpses of a Sons of Horus squad. Nightfall approached; the backdrop of the sky grew dark even as the constant weapon discharges filling the Urgall Depression provided abundant lighting.

New streaks of flame filled the sky like meteors. They couldn't be aircraft: too far, too slow, too large. They could only be void ships – or their debris. The overwhelming treachery on Isstvan's black sands must have occurred in the void above as well. Nex stared up into the deepening night. Those were probably remnants of the Legion's fleet sliding out of orbit.

His body ran hot; despite Astartes physiology the last hours had taxed them all beyond measure. He settled himself with the bodies, arranged himself to look like one of the corpses. The Legion… was dead. He'd seen the ruined bodies, so thick upon the ground a Legionary could nearly walk one end of the valley to the other upon them. He had no idea if Lord Corax was still alive. Could Primarchs die? He'd always wondered. Never expected to find out this way. Again, he wondered what it would be like to care. Nex let his Catalepsean Node spool up and slipped into the near-dreams of Astartes half-sleep.

* * *

Melchar had broached the subject once after a mission. They'd been on campaign against the Stryg Lords: bloody murder work in asteroid tunnels. Nex was cleaning his gear while a trio of Moritats carried the corpse of another, preparing him for burial.

"You should say something," Melchar said, nodding at the passing Moritats.

It took Kaedes a moment to realize Melchar was addressing him. "Why?"

"You're Moritat-Prime. It's your responsibility."

"My responsibility is to kill the Primarch's targets."

Melchar sighed, then chuckled. "You're a lousy Prime."

Nex didn't disagree. "I never asked for the position."

"No, I don't expect you did." Melchar grinned. "You never wondered why the Raven made you Moritat-Prime?"

Strange question. "I'm good at killing."

"Master of understatement, you are."

Nex blinked.

"Many a remembrancer would sell their firstborn to possess a fraction of the artistry you display when it comes to killing."

Nex blinked again. A compliment? Such things didn't often flow from the Legion.

"But no, that's not why."

"Then what?"

"You kill without passion, without… attachment to the deed. Many claim you're perpetually Sable Branded, but they're wrong."

Nex cocked his head, curious.

"Nobody Sable Branded fights with your tranquility, Blood-Crow." Melchar crossed his arms. "You're the Prime because you don't care. You just need a target and all other considerations fade away."

"So?"

"Killing should be an impersonal thing. Or at least, the Primarch thinks so."

Odd. It always seemed very personal to Nex.

"You can separate it," Melchar continued. "The deed from the reason."

Nex said nothing. He didn't quite understand what Melchar was blathering about. What was there to separate? Targets came and he killed them. Simple.

"Perhaps that's why. You kill with artistry but no soul."

Another curious concept. _Soul._ The Imperial Truth denied such things, excoriated them as superstitions to be burned away by the pure fire of reason. Or so the remembrancers said. Odd of Melchar to use such a term.

"Killing is killing."

"I suppose it's all the same to you. You don't even care who or what the targets are, do you?"

"Nobody should. They're targets."

"What if it was one of our own? One of our fellow Legions, or even within?" Melchar shrugged. "Unthinkable, I know. Just… call it a theoretical, the way the Ultramarines are so fond of."

Nex set the half-disassembled Fulcrum down. "They'd be targets."

Melchar laughed grimly. "And that's why you're the Prime." He glanced over to where the other Moritats had almost drifted out of sight. "You know what, don't worry about it. I'll say some words for Lankaron."

"Do as you will."

"Right. Just one more question. What do _you_ kill for? Besides orders, I mean. What's your reason, Kaedes? Your purpose?"

Nex had no answer.


	5. The Closing Noose

**Planetfall, Plus Seven Hundred Eighty-Two Hours Terran Sidereal**

Escape.

Evade.

Kaedes Nex wasn't sure how long he'd been prowling the Isstvan wastes. At last count, his retinal display had shown four-hundred thirty-three hours since mission commencement. That was before a powered dagger had sheared into his helmet, taking out the left lens and nearly his eye with it. The close encounter with the matter-disruptive field had left ghost images dancing in his vision long afterwards. They'd looked strangely like Raven Guard Legionaries jerking and falling as mass-reactives punched into their armor and flesh. He'd returned the favor to the Alpha Legionnaire with the traitor's own dagger, only he got the eye – and the brain behind. He'd kept the power dagger.

The skies were still a mass of roiling dark clouds, angry like the world itself had taken offense at the carnage upon its surface. Helmetless, the Isstvan air smelled of blood and fyceline, of decay held back by the harsh cold, and burning petrochemicals and munitions. Flames still dotted the Urgall Depression; some from chemical weapons employed in the hours of massacre, others more recently started. Sporadic gunfire echoed across the valley, skirmishes as those few who'd managed to break from the encirclement continued to fight for survival – no, for vengeance.

Despite the overwhelming numerical advantage, despite the crushing surprise and the traitors' knife through the back, the three Legions had died hard. Remnants fought on still, like the mega-predators of the Borostran Sector that fought on in a wild frenzy even after taking mortal wounds dozens of times over.

Most of Horus' forces had moved on. Though the massacre at the dropsite hadn't been total, it had accomplished its strategic purpose. In one fell swoop the Warmaster had swept the galactic board of three Astartes Legions loyal to the Emperor. Now the bulk of them had departed, opening gambit played out successfully.

Nex slipped into a shadowed gulch underneath one of the countless Urgall cliffs. Good, more corpses. He moved in, scavenged recycled nutrient supplies from backpack feeds and bolt pistol ammunition. The Fulcrums had long used all their ammunition, but he never thought to discard them. He'd just have soon have thought about discarding an arm or a hand.

More gunfire sounded close by. He froze, listened. Two bursts, nothing else. Not a skirmish then. Probably more executions. Direly wounded Astartes slipped into suspended animation comas, and the Warmaster's hunters were being thorough in their checks. The gunfire probably meant… Iron Warriors. The World Eaters inevitably sawed heads off, collecting skulls for some reason. The Alpha Legion and Word Bearers too disdained battlefield execution by bolter. From what Nex had seen they were collecting bodies in the case of the former, gene-seed in the latter. Neither seemed to care if the ones they harvested were dead or alive.

Heavy footsteps approached. Definitely Iron Warriors. Nex waited, one with the shadows, as a quartet of Legionaries in dirty metal plate tromped past. The Marine on rear point glanced into the gulch, panned a light over the corpses within.

"Fulgrim's peacocks. Freaks."

Another joined him, looked down at the ruptured armor. "These look normal enough. Keep moving: the sooner we finish this the sooner we can get back to the real war."

"Did you see them during the encirclement? I'm tempted to put some rounds into them, just to be sure."

A sigh. "Just don't waste too much ammo," the other Iron Warrior said, walking away.

Nex reached down and gripped his appropriated dagger. He waited until he heard the crunch and shift of the Iron Warrior's boots in the dirt turning away, and pulled himself up over the lip of the gulch silently.

The first stroke sliced through the neck joint, severed vocal cords. The second stroke parted armor power connections. Nex flipped the power dagger into a reverse grip and drove it down through the crown of his victim's helm in a hammer blow. The Iron Warrior twitched and kicked as the matter disrupting field burst his brain – and fired a burst into the ground as his fingers clenched in one final reflex.

The others didn't react, inured to sudden short outbreaks of gunfire by the execution duty. Nex seized the bolter arm and turned it on the other three Iron Warriors, stitching them with rounds until the bolter locked empty.

_That_ got their attention. One fell facedown, back generator a ruined, sparking mass leaking blood from nearly a dozen punctures. The other two whirled and brought their own bolters up with transhuman speed and returned fire, perforating the upright corpse of their battle-brother. They moved, spreading in opposite directions as the body collapsed. One skirted the gulch lip as he approached the corpse, smoking bolter raised. He glanced down into the-

Eyes of pure black staring over a bolt pistol muzzle. Kaedes lunged straight up, caught hold of the Iron Warrior's collar, and pressed the looted pistol up into the Mk II helmet's underside. He squeezed the trigger and leaned back, letting his weight pull the body over the edge into the gulch.

He moved, dashing along the length of the gulch as he unfastened his cloak. The time on Isstvan had taught him that the Fourth Legion liked their explosives in all shapes, sizes, and situations. A frag grenade clattered down from above, right atop the downed Iron Warrior. Predictable. The explosion was still deafening, channeled by the ditch in the ground.

Bolter fire hosed down the gulch. Nex was still moving, pulling himself up rocky handholds. He threw his cloak up over the edge, directed away from himself. Bolt rounds hissed through to detonate in the cliff wall beyond. He came over the edge and slammed into the Iron Warrior two meters away, bowling him over. Nex drove one fist repeatedly into the other Legionary's faceplate, landed three blows before they hit the ground.

The Iron Warrior curled and kicked both feet into Nex's chest with a crash like groundcars colliding; the blow knocked the Raven Guard off and away. He leapt to his feet, pulling a saw-toothed combat knife as he did so.

Nex was gone.

"Fly away, little raven! There's no-" He paused, looked down at the row of krak grenades clipped to his waist.

Krak grenades missing their ignition levers.

"Shi-"

The implosion charges detonated in a resounding cascade of the cracks they were named for. In the deepening shadows Nex smiled, opened his fist, and let the bundle of little metal pieces fall to the ground.

* * *

**Planetfall, Plus Seven Hundred Eighty Six Hours Terran Sidereal**

He found Thayon Melchar some hours later. Somehow, nobody had looted or desecrated his corpse yet. Kaedes examined the scene; Melchar lay near the base of a slope, jump pack shattered. His armor bore so many punctures there seemed to be more air than ceramite encasing his bloody limbs. One last, unused melta bomb hung from his hip. He still gripped his modified plasma pistols in death, cowl shrouds crusted with dirt and blood. The slope behind Melchar was a churned morass. Footprints, Kaedes realized. Melchar had fallen covering some massed retreat.

Nex looked at the clearing before Melchar. Corpses covered the black ground. Word Bearers, Night Lords, and World Eaters. All alike in death, the distinctive deep burns of plasma wounds through hearts and heads. On any other field, in any other battle, this would have been a deed of legend.

Here, it was just one more act of desperate defiance against the inevitable.

Kaedes crouched down over Melchar's body. He reached down, detached the remarkably intact helmet. The flesh beneath was unexpectedly whole, too. The Moritat-Secundus had fallen recently – another one of the scattered skirmishes in the massacre site. Melchar stared sightlessly into the sky, a last bitter smile fixed on his face. Nex cocked his head; he'd seen countless beings die up close, many of them at his hand. So very few did so while smiling.

Strange.

Kaedes pried the customized plasma pistols from Melchar's death grips, unbuckled the spare hydrogen canisters that fed the energy weapons, and slung them into place around himself. He remembered what Melchar had said, hours before they'd all thrown themselves unwittingly to the slaughter.

"You died well."

Was there more he was supposed to say? Nex shrugged, donned Melchar's helmet, and started walking away. He halted twenty paces away, thought about what he'd seen the traitor Legions doing to the corpses of the fallen. He turned back.

He walked away again a minute later. Behind him, the melta bomb detonated with a sizzling roar and immolated Melchar's remains.


	6. Shattered Veil

**Planetfall, Plus Nine Hundred Forty-Seven Hours Terran Sidereal**

The pile of skulls hurt to look at. Taller than a Marine and cleaned, flensed, and gleaming, the skull pyramid spoke to what the World Eaters had been gathering heads for. Nex didn't know why they did this. He'd seen other similar pyramids assembled by Angron's Legion – ruins of them, too. Loyalist survivors were striking them. The hit and fade pattern indicated Raven Guard tactics; he supposed he should feel some kind of relief or pride.

Currently, all Nex felt was a dull ache behind his eyeballs, like throbbing pressure against his skull. He'd never gotten so close to one before. His retinal display flickered and danced with static as he stared at the skull pyramid a quarter kilometer away. He… tasted blood. Like a mist on his tongue. His hands clenched unconsciously and he stopped himself from drawing Melchar's pistols. A hot spike of adrenaline drove through his brain; he needed to spill blood. Tear flesh apart, coat his fists in it, watch it spatter upon the ground.

_Blood. Blood for the-_

He'd already risen from his crouch and taken two steps towards the pyramid before he realized what he was doing. This… this was new, disturbing. He'd never experienced such loss of control. The realization perturbed Nex like few things ever had before.

He forced himself back down to a crouch in the late Isstvan afternoon, breath coming in rapid gasps. No gunfire, no shouts. Nex looked away from the skulls, forcing it out of focus. He stared instead at the Astartes forms surrounding it. Blood and gore coated their armor in such thick layers he couldn't tell which Legion they belonged to. All the while the pyramid's presence clawed at his head like some ethereal parasite. He didn't understand how the pillar could cause such a reaction. Was this one unique? Did all Astartes feel this way near them?

Nex started moving again, crossing the cracked and blasted ground in a quick crawl. The pyramid stood at the apex of a low hill, catching the fading light; it somehow seemed to cast a red glow. A trick of the eye: it must be. He pulled himself along from shadow to shadow, careful not to stare too long at the flensed pyramid. He needed to destroy it. Armor husks still littered the ground, Legion sigils and colors obscured by the thick layers of ash that had been fallen in the battle's aftermath. The pressure in his head increased as he drew closer. His heart raced, screaming for him to kill and rend tear and…

Chanting. He heard chanting now, in some language he didn't recognize but sent spikes of pain and hatred through him. Nex crawled closer; such activity wasn't the norm for World Eaters. Finally he got close enough for a better view. It was a joint group: gore-spattered white armor among stormy gray plate.

Word Bearers. They were the ones doing the chanting. Not the only ones, he realized as he crept closer. The World Eaters chanted too, low atavistic growls barely recognizable in Gothic.

"Blood for the blood god blood for the blood god blood for the blood god…"

He barely stopped himself from leaping up and running in to rend and hew and tear and- No. Another look: four Word Bearers and four World Eaters, clustered before the gruesome fane. One of the Word Bearers held a tome of some kind, reading aloud from it. Swirling Colchisian script decorated his armor from pauldrons to greaves. First target.

The World Eaters clutched bloody chainaxes, banging the teeth across their chests. They gunned the motors in rhythmic spurts; Nex crawled a meter closer every time the shrieking growls filled the air. He could taste the blood again, thick on his tongue now. Feel the drizzle of it on his skin. He-

Had stood up and walked the last steps towards the pyramid.

The Word Bearer with the book lowered it as he noticed Nex's presence. His shaved scalp gleamed with more runic script that twisted and warped as he grinned mockingly. "Come to join us, brother?"

The World Eaters turned towards him as well. Feverish eyes and glowing lens stared at him. Their stillness was not that of the Word Bearer's smug confidence but the tension of a wolf pack sighting their prey.

"The blood god marks your soul," the Word Bearer continued. "Come, slake your devotion to the true pantheon and-"

Nex's plasma bolt burst his head in a splash of vapor. The two World Eaters on either side of him died next, simultaneous plasma shots slicing through ceramite armor without resistance. Nex kept shooting; he pressed triggers as each hand ambidextrously guided a pistol. The other Word Bearers died seemingly without noticing him, still kneeling before the skull structure. The three never stopped chanting even as plasma bolts punctured lungs and spines.

The World Eaters lunged forward, axes ready. One went down to a plasma round that sheared the left half of his skull away. The other staggered when a plasma bolt burned through his chest but kept coming. The bellowing Legionary collided with Nex, knocking one pistol away. Nex deflected a chainaxe stroke with his empty hand, then went over as the World Eater bore him to the ground.

He nudged his head aside from a blow; the axe crunched into the rock beside him, sent a spray of shards bouncing off his helmet. The traitor Legionary hammered a fist into Nex's faceplate, spittle flying from his bare head. He was close enough that Nex could see the jagged veins protruding from his forehead. Too close for a plasma shot. The pistol vibrated in his grip anyways, pulsing its overheat warning from constant use and-

Overheat.

Nex wrestled his hand free, brought the pistol up between them. Steam poured from the exhaust vents just behind the muzzle. Turning his hand, Nex pressed the red-hot muzzle into the World Eater's eye.

Not even a Legionary could ignore such a thing. Blood hissed and evaporated as the muzzle burned into flesh. Yelling in pain and rage, the World Eater's grip loosened slightly – just enough. Nex curled a leg up, planted his boot in the other Legionary's gut, and kicked out. The World Eater left a scrap of flesh seared to the pistol muzzle as he staggered backwards.

Nex extended the plasma pistol; temperature warnings flared in his retinal display as he discharged the weapon across his body. The son of Angron sank to his knees, a second gaping hole melted through his breastplate. The chainaxe slipped to the ground with a clatter from unresponsive fingers.

Pulse hammering in his ears, Kaedes swept forward, intent on seizing the chainaxe. Melchar's plasma pistol fell forgotten to the ground. He would split the World Eater's skull, grind the teeth through bone and brain, tear skin and flesh from wet osseous and renduntilthebloodflowedandpouredand-

Nex stopped, then pulled the power dagger he'd taken from the Alpha Legionnaire. He stepped in, swept around behind the gasping World Eater, and took hold of the lolling head. Vivid flashes of spraying blood and adding another skull to the pyramid filled Nex's vision-

He punched the dagger forward into the base of the wounded Legionary's skull, severing the cervical vertebrae. Kaedes grimaced as he withdrew the dagger and released the corpse, forcing himself not to carve the body to pieces. The pounding in his head grew stronger; rage crept in like water from cracks in a dam.

Pulling himself away from the corpses, Kaedes retrieved Melchar's fallen pistols. Strangely the feverish bloodlust diminished as he did so, just enough to barely think clearly again. He looked down at the customized weapons – and saw something he'd never noticed before. Melchar had modified the already-custom shroud cowls covering the radiating coils. He'd carved aquila symbols into the thick metal heat sinks. Only the Third Legion had held the right to bear to bear the Emperor's symbol upon their heraldry, but that evidently hadn't stopped Thayon from marking his own gear.

Nex moved warily back towards the corpses, breathing shallowly and rapidly. He collected frag and krak grenades, fighting the urge to collect skulls as he did so. Approaching the skull structure felt like walking into a plasma reactor. The skulls… Nex couldn't shake the feeling that the skulls were somehow staring at him. Working quickly, he shoved grenades into the base of the pyramid. Each contact through his gauntlets felt like plunging his fist into- _hot, flowing blood. _

The Blood-Crow popped the ignition lever on the last krak grenade and tossed it into the pile, then turned away and started running. Twenty meters away the munitions detonated with a series of rippling cracks. He felt the pyramid collapse; not physically but with a snap in his mind like the overpressure from a thermobaric weapon. The driving, incessant bloodlust quieted down; the taste of blood vanished from his tongue and the pounding within his head eased away.

Nex kept running. Plasma fire was an unsubtle thing, as was a chain detonation of grenades. Hunter squads still prowled the Isstvan wilderness, seeking survivors from the loyalist Legions. No need to get caught.

He headed northwest. Out in the distance, far beyond where Horus had made his initial fortifications, swarmed lander ships of sizes and builds ranging from Legion Thunderhawks to Mechanicum Titan-barges. The sheer numbers rendered them visible from dozens of kilometers away; moving the gathered forces of seven Legions was no small undertaking. Nex had been heading towards the landing site for the better part of a day – or was it more? The continuing meteorological disruptions made it difficult to tell.

That way lay… he wasn't sure. Was it escape? The landing zone was almost certainly the only way off Isstvan V. And that was… optimistic. The site also ensured plentiful targets. Far more than he could take alone. Pure suicide.

The prospect held its own appeal, Nex realized. His Legion was destroyed, his Primarch's fate a mystery. Corax's last target designation to him had been broad: kill any traitors he encountered. There was no way he could do that now by himself. Not literally. What was it Corax had always said? _The principle behind an order is even more important than the method with which it is executed. Understand the spirit of the law, and the letter will fall into place._

Corax had such strange ideas.

But he'd always been worth listening to.

Nex slipped into the shadows of rocky crevice as the whining hum of jetbikes sounded in the distance. He listened for a long moment, determined they were heading for the pyramid site. Not surprising. Nex held still, waiting for the patrol to move on. He thought about what the Legionnaires gathered around the skulls had been doing. Ritual and worship, proscribed under the Imperial Truth. As far as Nex knew, it said nothing about massacring fellow Legions. Perhaps it should have.

Jetbikes screamed past and scattered, dispersing into a standard search pattern heading east. Unsurprising: he still heard signs of fighting from that way, and it stood to reason few of the surviving loyalists would head _towards_ the greatest gathering of the traitor Legions. Whatever remained of the three Legions caught in the Warmaster's trap were peeling away, drawing hunter packs and Angron's Legion out towards the wastelands beyond the Urgall Depression.

Nex waited for the sound of the engines to fade before resuming his trek towards the landing zone. He still heard the chants echoing in his head like – _blades scraping bloody flesh from skulls _– patterns of vox distortion. Blood god. Pantheon. Such foreign terms. When had Astartes turned to worship? The last time he'd encountered human expressions of faith had been…

* * *

Nearly a year ago. Kaedes had been prowling the lower decks of the _Shadow of the Emperor_: one of his routine exercises. Some of the others called it _wraith-slipping._ Kaedes called it moving. The darkness that so defined the Legion's preferred environment dominated the corridors and chambers of these decks. It was part Legion tradition, part practicality. When the massive Battle Barge engaged its reflex shields it needed to minimize every possible emission and the fewer unnecessary lights the quicker the transition.

Down in a transitory corridor running from generators to one of the lance broadsides, Nex moved from shadow to shadow, following the course of thick, shielded power cables running along from ceiling to deck. This was almost too easy; between going unarmored, the constant background hums and clatters of voidship operations, and the multiple nooks and crannies throughout the decks, Nex had made his way through the winding spaces without being noticed once.

He paused and froze instinctively as another sound joined the hum of the power cables. Voices – mortal voices from up ahead. Crew members, gathered under one of the rare puddles of light in this section. He crept onwards, listening. He'd been through this way dozens of times; there was no scheduled shift for this hour. Neither did the voices sound like a Mechanicum overseer directing a work group. It sounded like… a remembrancer gathering Corax had made him attend once. Nex drew closer, transhuman hearing picking out the chatter and augmented vision showing him the different uniform assortments present on the twenty-four people. These people came from assorted departments ranging from command staff to armory menials to army auxiliaries.

One older man wearing the uniform of crew support stood before the others, a battered pamphlet in his hands. "The Emperor of Mankind is the Light and the Way, and all his actions are for the benefit of mankind, which is his people. The Emperor is God and God is the Emperor, so it is taught in the Lectio Divinitatus, and above all things, the Emperor will protect..."

"The Emperor will protect," echoed the others.

Nex took a long moment to understand what he'd just witnessed: a secret gathering claiming to venerate the Emperor as divine. He started forward, silent and invisible as ever; only after four meters did he realize he'd drawn his ever-present knife with the intention of executing everybody up ahead.

He made it another three before remembering that Corax hadn't given him permission to kill them, and he'd given the Primarch his word about such "indiscriminate rampages." Two more steps and Nex stowed the blade away.

"Be at peace, brothers and sisters," said the one who appeared to be the leader. "That concludes this meeting. As ever, we'll get word to you when we have a time and place for the next one. Go, and know that the Emperor watches over you."

With that, the meeting began to disperse. Nex watched from the darkness; this group knew what they were doing. They left in small groups of twos or threes, staggered apart and in different directions heading for various access points. They left no physical evidence either, tucking pamphlets and prints into uniforms and pockets sewn into the inside of their clothing. Before long only the leader – the _priest_ – remained, head bowed in a posture of devotion.

Nex never knew why he allowed himself to be discovered. He stepped out into the penumbra of the shadows, waiting as the man finished mumbling some last benedictions. The priest looked up – and recoiled at the sight of the pale specter staring at him with eyes of pitch black.

"Oh, God-Emperor," he whispered, crossing his hands before his chest. Nex noticed the resemblance to the aquila. "If you've come to kill me, then do it. Just know that you can kill neither our belief, nor the faith that strengthens us."

Nex said nothing, just stared at the man. The priest sighed and trembled after a moment, then backed away slowly from the motionless Astartes. He reached the edge of the light, then stiffened, turned, and walked away. Nex watched the whole time, hand on the knife hilt.

He listened as the priest's calm, measured footsteps eventually faded, then sheathed the blade. He should report it, tell the Primarch about the movement within his ranks. Corax would know what to do, would be true to the principles of the Imperial Truth.

Kaedes shrugged and kept walking.


	7. To the Void

**Planetfall, Plus Nine Hundred Fifty-Nine Hours Terran Sidereal**

The Titan barge lifted off into the sky like a mountain breaking free of gravity's grip; the massive pillars of flame on its underside filled the air with a bass roar. Thunderhawks and Stormbirds darted past the immense transport. Flat on a black rock, Nex stared at the plateau filled with more transports, landers, and prefab temp structures. His autosenses pierced the dim light to pick out Legion insignias and details: Sons of Horus, Death Guard, Emperor's Children, Iron Warriors, Word Bearers, Night Lords, and Alpha Legion. Tens of thousands still left upon Isstvan's black sands, the reconsolidation slowed by the density of debris in orbit and slipping out of the sky.

From his vantage point Nex noticed an odd little detail in the disposition of the Legion camps. Each of them stood distinct from the other, Legion forces in their own unique camps. That wasn't uncommon, but these… some of the camps looked like they were positioned for hostilities against one another. The Night Lords and Death Guard had nearly as many sentries posted inside against the Emperor's Children as they did covering the outer approaches.

The Emperor's Children… the others said the Third Legion were exemplars of all facets of warfare. Nex didn't see that here; their camp was a riot of hedonistic activity that bore little resemblance to an Astartes Legion. It was also his way in. The bacchanalian camp had either neglected to post sentries or they'd been distracted and wandered off. Such a thing would have been grounds for severe censure in the Raven Guard.

Nex stole across the broken ground, crawling over volcanic soil and going from deep shadow to deep shadow. Screams, shouts, and some kind of… blaring music filled the air from the Emperor's Children camp. Nex was no aesthete, but the strange piercing tones carried an edge of _wrongness _that felt like narcotic claws scratching furrows across his mind. He veered away from the Third Legion positions; was this related to the phenomenon with the skull pyramids?

Either way, he decided to avoid the Third Legion camp. If there _was_ anything like the skull structures he didn't trust his own control. Creeping through the gaps between the encampments Nex watched for an infiltration opportunity. If anything the Iron Warrior camp was too heavily fortified; the Fourth Legion's paranoia demanding no less even among allies. Night Lords – too far.

Nex found his opening at the Alpha Legion camp. Their camp was much smaller than the others; judging from the activity most of the Legionaries were already off-world. They even had regular human auxiliaries posted as guards. Whatever tasks the mysterious Legion was occupied with, they'd devoted most of their forces to them.

He slapped past a sentry line despite the evident professionalism displayed by the Army forces, resisting the urge to part throats along the way. Such actions would be counterproductive no matter how satisfying they might be. Deeper in sat rows of transports, Legion Stormbirds wingtip to wingtip with smaller Thunderhawks. Apart from the Astartes craft rested Army transports of various makes: fat-bellied dropships dwarfing shuttles and orbital landers.

A Legion vessel was too risky; Nex went for the Army ships. He passed several dropships. Too large, too crowded. He paused by a mound of Astartes corpses next to one rectangular transport perched above like a sated scavenger. Nex gave them a cursory look. The bodies belonged to loyal and traitor Legions alike, most of them sporting grotesque wounds of various origins. The ship caught his attention; dim ochre light came from the open ramp. The temperature readouts in his retinal display reported significantly lower temperatures than most humans were comfortable with.

Nex slipped up the ramp, knife in hand. His autosenses detected no voices, no activity. Avoiding the forward control sections he prowled towards the rear holding sections – following smeared trails of blood. He found the reason not long afterwards. What had once been a ready bay for arms and equipment was now a mortuary.

Nex looked down at the arranged Astartes corpses, stacked perpendicularly along both bulkheads like torpedoes readied for launch. Forty-some bodies, stuck into cryo tubes to the torso. Their armor testified to a variety of home Legions, most of them loyalist. Predominantly Raven Guard, actually. Some Iron Hands, a Salamander. Others belonged to the Warmaster's forces: Sons of Horus, Death Guard, Iron Warriors, a pair of Night Lords.

Each was unhelmed, most of them displaying the brutal wounds necessary to incapacitate a Legionary. Why preserve them? Nex inspected the closest corpse; it didn't look like a trophy. The Alpha Legion wasn't known for taking trophies… but then there was little the secretive Legion _was_ known for. They were going to the trouble of preserving the corpses, so that implied some further purpose.

Nex left the frozen chamber and swept the rest of the ship. Empty. Humans could be so squeamish about corpses. Regardless, here was an opportunity – perhaps one he wouldn't get again. Nex went back to the cold storage and sought out one of the Raven Guard bodies wearing similar Mk IV armor. It wasn't a perfect match, but given that grime and filth coated both of them it seemed similar enough. He pushed the control rune for the cryo tube's tray and it extended with a soft hiss, sliding the body out.

Carrying the dead weight of another Legionary slowed Nex to a crawl as he hauled the armored corpse through the shadows out of the ship and to the pile of bodies outside. He slid the dead Raven Guard into the pile, then paused. Their faces were quite the mismatch. Nex thought about the likelihood of discovery. He'd heard that some mortals found all Astartes to look alike. An uncertain thing to trust an escape to.

He drew his knife.

* * *

Kaedes settled into position on the slab as it retracted into the cryo tube. Ignoring the cold, he turned his mind inward, slowing his heart rate and breathing to glacial rates. With each breath Nex slowed another of his body's functions, bringing himself closer to a Sus-an Membrane coma. His thoughts fluttered like heat shimmer from a melta discharge as he sank deeper – but not entirely into the coma. The suspended animation a Marine entered by activating the brain-meshed organ could be maintained nearly indefinitely, but required external attention to awake from.

With only a fraction of his senses alert to the world outside, Nex's mind retreated to the hazy zone between consciousness and coma. Part of it tried to plan ahead; if this shuttle did get offworld with him, what then? Boarding some capitol ship, most likely. Astartes corpses: that implied direct Alpha Legion involvement. A strike cruiser or battle barge then. Outnumbered thousands to one – and that was just the probable Legionary count. Ironically, the larger the vessel they docked with, the better his odds. A vessel on par with a battle barge was a veritable metropolis, a self-contained city powering through the stars. He could easily vanish into the depths of such a ship.

And then what?

He wondered how many he could kill aboard a battle barge before they cornered him. Perhaps start his way up from the menial crew; most ships had vital systems tended to predominantly by mortal serfs. Kill the weak ones; try to draw out Legionaries slowly. He'd need to-

"Why are you doing this?" the sweating man asked.

_What?_

It took Nex a moment to recognize this… _another memory_. An old one- the oldest, actually. Before the string of kills, before the title and the imprisonment on Lycaeus. Before the Primarch and the Transformation.

"Why?" The man held shaking hands up before a grease-stained tunic.

The handgun looked monstrously oversized in the boy's fist. He stared at the man for a long moment.

"Wait- no, please! You don't have to-"

The boy squeezed the trigger, wincing at how loud the report was in the little dwelling unit. The man staggered back a step, looked down at the red stain spreading across his chest. He looked back up, gasping in pain and disbelief. The boy fired again, putting another round through the man's chest, and watched the man stagger back another step, collide with the hab wall, and slide down. A final realignment of the rough sights and– the shot seemed to echo in the little room as blood and brains sprayed across the dull metal wall.

The boy lowered the smoking pistol while staring at the corpse. So that was what killing a man was like. So easy; stalking the factorum worker home unseen had been more challenging. The boy slipped back out through the window overlooking the smoggy, night-lit city as alarmed shouts sounded from the surrounding hab units. He'd need more practice soon. The gun was loud, perhaps too loud. Perhaps a blade next time. Much quieter, and he could see what it was like even closer…

The memory faded, cordoned and buried in Nex's near-comatose mind. Odd. He'd never recalled anything of his previous life so clearly. A side effect of the Sus-an Membrane? How long had he been killing for the Primarch now? Longer than most mortals had been alive, he knew. For all that the iterators attached to the Expeditionary Fleets had spoken of humanity united and ascendant, _compliance_ was more often purchased by blood and death than freely given. War was the Imperium's foundation, the cornerstone of its growth. Slipping further into the coma, Nex's last sense of the outside world was the low rumble of engines cycling up.

* * *

Noise.

Movement.

Nex came out of the near-coma slowly, rigidly controlling his breathing. He sensed activity in the chamber with him: the hiss of cryo tube slabs and the thuds of ceramite-coated bodies on the cold deck. He listened for a minute, posthuman senses isolating and processing the information as his body returned to readiness.

Two sets of piston-augmented workers, organic components sustained by crude machinery Mono-tasked servitors hauling heavy Legionary corpses. No threat. Two other mortals, walking, inspecting, and making comments about individual states of the assembled bodies. One right next to him, the other… across the chamber. By the sound of the voices, standing by one of the Death Guard bodies – the one missing half his skull. The pungent, sharp scent of antiseptic filled the air, mixed with the rich copper tones of Astartes blood. And underneath it all… the atmospheric pressure had changed; they'd left Isstvan V.

"What does the Legion even want with these?" said an exhausted female voice – the serf across the chamber.

"Who knows? I didn't ask," said the serf standing close to Nex. "Don't think they'd tell us anyways."

"Rumor is we're heading for Ultramar, shadowing the Seventeenth and Twelfth."

"Really? I've heard we're moving to intercept a Space Wolf task force, but with this Legion, you never- What happened to this one's face?" Footsteps, coming closer.

"Probably what happened to all of them?" The other serf hadn't moved. "Astartes take a lot of killing."

"No, I mean…" The voice came from even closer now. "His face is… it's _loose._ What-"

Nex reached up and seized the serf's throat. Simultaneously his other hand pulled his old knife and hurled it across the chamber, directing it by sound. Nex tightened his grip as the female serf grunted and collapsed, hilt protruding from her sternum. He squeezed, crushing the windpipe as his victim clutched in vain at his arm. His fingers tightened more; bones crumpled in his grip and the frantic scrabbling at his forearm ceased. The whole affair had taken less than two seconds.

Nex released the corpse, then reached down and peeled the other Legionary's face off his own. Sitting up, he tossed the scrap of flesh and skin aside and reclaimed Melchar's helmet at his feet. The servitors continued their work of pulling corpses out of the cryo tubes, ignorant of the murders. Nex got off the slab, retrieved his knife, and proceeded to disable the servitors by tearing out their cortical processors. He tore a strip from the strangled serf's shirt and wiped the lingering viscera from his face and head.

The helmet went back on, sealed with a hiss, and blocked out the antiseptic smells. Nex left the chamber and swept through the transport, silently eliminating a pair of other crewmen. The view from the command module showed a busy hangar outside: a Legion vessel. The clustered vessels offered plentiful shadows and darkness to make his way out, but his work aboard the transport would be discovered before long – especially if Alpha Legionnaires were expecting the Astartes bodies aboard.

He could remedy that.

The transport possessed a standard Helios-pattern generator; it took Nex less than three minutes of careful _modifications_ with the power dagger to destabilize it. He headed for the embarkation ramp, leaving a slowly growing puddle of coolant fluids dribbling from the generator. By his calculations, it would overload in ten minutes – maybe less.

Nex crept down the ramp into the hangar. Keeping to the shadows underneath the boxy transport, he worked his way back. He passed a servitor connecting a refueling hose and casually flicked a hand out, plunging his blade into the boxy implants controlling its limbs. The servitor twitched and shook, and the heavy hydraulic claw that was its right arm snapped shut from the misfiring signals – right around the refueling hose.

Stuttering in binaric, the servitor slumped over as processed promethium flooded from the ruptured hose. Nex kept moving, flowing from shadow to shadow towards the hangar edge. He looked for – there, the thick cluster of pipes running up into the ceiling. Each tube was larger around than a man was tall and ran up into the ship depths. The shadowy catwalks above would provide the best method to slip deeper into the ship, provided his distraction worked as-

A shockwave rocked the hangar as sabotaged generator detonated. Shouts and screams filled the air as crew and serfs moved frantically, some retreating from the growing blaze while others seized firefighting equipment and ran towards the wreckage. The closest ones had just started spraying down the edges of the blaze with suppressant foam when the promethium ignited. Two other secured transports went up in flames as the chemical fire spread along the deck, igniting people and equipment alike. Shouted orders turned to cries of pain as flames arched out from the ruptured hose, engulfing crew members and servitors.

Nex clambered up the back of the thick pipes, hauling himself up with Astartes ease. He stopped halfway up and secured his grip as alarm klaxons echoed through the hangar. The immense outer doors ground open moments later, venting the atmosphere to the vacuum. Secured gunships and transports rocked in their berths but otherwise stayed in place.

The people weren't so fortunate. Crew members flew out of the hangar, limbs flailing and mouths opened in silent screams. Still others managed to hold on, fighting through the trauma of sudden depressurization. No respite came for them as the Alpha Legion vessel ruthlessly vented its own hangar to stop the shipboard fire. The tug of venting atmosphere eased and stopped over several minutes and Nex resumed his movement, climbing up to the highest catwalks. Shadows danced as gentle starlight from the open doors flooded in and suffocated corpses collapsed to the deck like discarded cartridges.

The vast doors finally began sliding shut as those few crew who'd managed to reach void suits started moving through the hangar, linking up with other survivors and searching for the cause of the sudden catastrophe. Inner hatches opened and an Alpha Legion combat squad rushed into the hangar, bolters and grav-gun ready as they spread out, alert for any signs of an attack. More void-suited crew bearing flame suppressors and repair equipment followed them, heading straight for the transport wreckage once the squad sergeant nodded the all clear.

In the commotion none noticed Nex cut into a two-meter wide air grate in the highest reaches of the hangar. His power dagger sliced through bolts with effortless economy; pulling it back gently Nex slipped through the gap and pulled the grate back into position behind him. Not perfect, but under the circumstances it would do.

His autosenses lit the air duct in pale, washed-out green. Narrow and cramped, the shaft was one of the countless tunnels worming its way through a voidship's innards. In the darkness Nex heard the gentle current of moving air underneath the constant rattle and clatter of the myriad pumps and fans keeping air and water flowing through a void-borne city. Pipes and tubes filled the edges of the space.

Nex crawled forward in the labyrinth, putting distance between himself and the hangar. The darkness proved no impediment; the air sweeping through the cramped tunnel reminded him of some days during the Lycaeus uprising, dragging himself through hewn rock tunnels barely wide enough to fit an adolescent. Creeping out of prepared dead drop hatches to ambush Guild officials in their own offices and quarters.

Humans always let their guard down when they thought themselves safe in their homes. Nex watched for ventilation gaps and grills as he crept along, drawing upon senses of direction honed in dark tunnels to construct a mental map of his surroundings. The air duct would lead to a source of some kind eventually: a generator or large pump – Nex had never paid too much attention to these details. He would just look for anything that seemed important.

And then he would strike.


End file.
